United States: A new study shows that following the Green Mediterranean diet can help keep your brain healthy as you age. This diet, which includes foods like green tea and plants such as Mankai, may help control blood sugar levels. The study found that lower blood sugar is connected to a younger brain, especially in areas important for memory.
Researchers used advanced MRI scans to see that people on this diet had less brain shrinkage over 18 months, suggesting the diet may help keep your brain strong as you get older.
This dietary approach can offer a route to the prevention of age-related cognitive impairment. The results throw light on relative diet modification and lifestyle improvements as viable approaches towards prevention of incidents involving the brain.
Key Facts:
- Low levels of blood sugar were linked with youth brain Age which would slow down the brain aging process.
- Diet rich in green plant polyphenols called Green-Med diet and was found to slow brain aging in participants.
- The DIRECT PLUS trial employed MRI to demonstrate the decrease in brain tissue volume changes in patients with better glycemic control.
- Neuronal loss and overall brain shrinkage, known scientifically as brain atrophy that occurs as people age, can result in dementia and other neurological disorders.
For now, aging is an irreversible process, although new studies from an 18-month dietary control suggests that one’s lifestyle and diet can slow down aging in the brain.
The newly published global research conducted at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev within the framework of the DIRECT PLUS Brain MRI trial focuses on the connection between blood sugar levels and brain function.
The results of MRI examination of the hippocampus and the lateral ventricles allowing determining the brain age which can be different from the person’s age. Age is the number of years that one attends while brain age signifies the health of the brain.
Normally, the hippocampus decreases in size and the lateral ventricies increase with age, they are said to represent brain aging. There are people whose brain ages is lower or higher than their real one.
A younger brain age indicates high cognitive health whiles an older age suggest that the r brain is aging faster and is therefore more prone to experience cognitive deteriorative diseases.
The recently published study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2024 was led by Dr. Ayelet Meron, a brain and nutrition expert from Ben-Gurion University in Israel together Health, Science and Nutrition researchers from Harvard University in the United States, Leipzig University in Germany, and other global researchers.
The research was hereby primarily carried out the Ph.D. student Dafna Pachter and overseen by the Prof. Iris Shai, along with several international collaborators.
A previous study which is published almost two years ago which is reported by that the Mediterranean and the green-MED diets significantly attenuated age-related brain atrophy by 50 percent withing the 18 months.
In the current study the researchers aimed to understand the mechanism by which the slowing of brain atrophy occurs.
The study found that hereby a decline in HbA1c and also the key markers of the long term and the sugar levels which are mainly linked with the positive change in the specific and particular brain regions which are commonly affected by the age-related atrophy.